Wednesday, 31 March 2010

The Newfangled Ironclads of Austro-Hungary and Italy (and a few remaining wooden ships) are duking it out for control of the Adriatic in a battle that historically saw little action but some strange manueverings as both sides get to grips with the new realities at sea.

Both fleets were short of a few ships, and there appeared to be a couple of anachronistic ships in each fleet that appeared in service after the battle (with radical design changes because of it). I had command of the 3rd Italian Squadron of mainly old fashioned non-clad ships with poor armour.

The 2nd Squadron took on the Austrians head-on which was probably not the best of ideas. In the time it took for the 1st and 3rd to get into position the ships of the 2nd was either sinking or leaving the battle, and so totally negating the Italians advantage in numbers, which is a critical factor when it came to the alternating ship movement.

After circling a bit, some firing between the fleets finally occured. At the longer ranges the weaker ships seemed to hold up not to badly so long as the fire wasn't concentrated on them. Making use of the smoke as cover left many targets difficult to hit.

Finally the fleets closed and some ramming occurred, with both the big ships of the opposing navies crashing into weaker opponents and sinking them outright. At this close range the shooting duel was intense.

An Austro-Hungarian marginal victory, but a lot more bloody than the original encounter.It also looks like the Club will be running a demo game at Phalanx, with a pre-run of the game being this years St Georges special. Romans vs Celts.¶